Backup systems for computing systems store everything from photographs to financial information to legal documents and, as such, it is imperative that these critical files are retained in the event of hardware failure, a building fire or any other calamity that may occur.
In existing backup systems, files are retained by a storage mechanism connected either permanently or temporarily to a computing environment in order to retain the files on some type of storage media. The storage media is preferably not co-located with the computing system.
Existing backup systems typically retain multiple versions of a file reflecting changes throughout the history of the file in the form of block differences. A block difference indicates that a particular block of data has changed between versions. However, this type of high-level look at the changes between versions does not provide a great deal of assistance for the user.